Chapter 49
Light trickled into my room through the half-open curtains as I limped inside. My thighs ached—and not from walking on my injured knee. A shadow darted from the dark bathing chamber, nearly knocking me over.
“Sylaira! There you are,” Heraphia said, her pearlescent hair plaited and rolling down her back. But instead of one neat braid, shimmering strands hung loose, like she’d been tossing and turning and tugging them free.
“Goddess, Heraphia, you startled me,” I gasped, hand flying to my chest. My heart beat a staccato rhythm into my palm. What if she had been someone sent by the Korona to capture me and drag me before her as some sort of public spectacle?
I wouldn’t put it past my mate’s sister.
“Tell me everything,” she insisted, gaze raking me from head to toe with one brow lifted in judgement. “Is that a bruise on your neck?”
“Hey!” I protested, smacking her arm as she reached for it.
She laughed, the sound too high and cutting off too abruptly as she followed me into the bathing chamber that connected our rooms. “Oh, come on, Sylaira. You can’t leave in the middle of the night and show up the next afternoon looking like you just had the best sex of your life without giving me all the juicy details. ”
I shook my head, turning the taps for the tub. “So insistent.” But I couldn’t help the lightness in my chest at the sight of her glittering eyes and alertness. After weeks of watching exhaustion hollow her out, that glimmer of the real Heraphia was a strand of sunlight dancing across a lake.
Even if beneath the shallow surface, something manic and desperate rattled.
I stripped off my shirt and threw it in her face. She caught it and sniffed. “Oh, you definitely let him claim you.”
“Gross,” I teased, sinking into the tub to wash away further evidence. “And shouldn’t you be admonishing me? After all, he killed your brother and our parents. He also broke your finger.”
Heraphia sighed, sinking to the floor and leaning against the marble wall. “He didn’t report us when he found us running. And he carried you like you were the most holy artifact in all the worlds when he guided us back. That shifted my opinion of him quite significantly.”
As it had for me.
“Besides, he’s your mate. This is the Goddess’s plan. I trust Her.”
There was that word again.
I motioned for the soap and she handed it to me. “You’re starting to sound like them.”
Her teeth sank into her lower lip. “I have to believe. For Zuriel.”
Belief had razed our realm long before Heraphia and I were born. For centuries, priestesses had indoctrinated Angels into the Goddess’s new faith. We’d been raised on the outside, knowing that the sycophantic notions most of the Angels clung to were falsities.
Heraphia had only been here a few weeks longer than me, and already, the monarch’s hymns sung in her veins, poisoning her from the inside out. The friend I’d once eaten sweets with until we both vomited in the garden, trying to hide the evidence from our parents, slipped away like smoke.
The other Seers sharing this hall had fared no better—if they’d ever believed otherwise at all.
The nobles, too, I was certain held no thoughts outside of their zealous conviction that the Goddess wanted the Angels to exterminate the Demons.
That their magic was unholy and borne of pure evil.
That their worship of the Fates was the gravest sin.
But could Vaeron be influenced to change his mind? Was that why the Goddess had chained us together?
Could I bring Heraphia back from the brink?
Heraphia flinched back like she’d Seen something, drawing me out of my inner spiral.
“I need a distraction,” she said in a rush, blinking hard and fast. As her eyes danced over me, a haunted look spilled like ink among aquamarine.
As if she didn’t need the break from boredom, but rather from magic and war.
“Tell me now or I swear on the Goddess I will dump cold water over your head.”
While that wasn’t as much of a threat in the cloud forest during the summer, I still acquiesced. “Okay, okay. Yes, I let him claim me.” The soap plopped into the frothing water. “And it was incredible. The orgasms he gave me…”
My best friend squealed and clapped her hands. “He looks like he knows what he’s doing.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t smother my smile. “Oh, he does. Especially with his magic. And he’s very intense about it too.”
“Don’t tell me he used his Command on you,” she gasped.
The way my core heated at the thought was downright shameful. I pressed my thighs together to smother the wetness and rubbed the bar of soap over the bottom of my foot. “Just his light.”
“Okay, but what about the claiming part? I’ve only heard whispers of the act. Your firsthand account will do wonders for my knowledge.”
I looked at her again, noting the mischievousness in the twist of her lips.
“Well, the moment he entered me was…insane.” That was truly the only word I had for it.
“It was like shattering and being remade all at once. Like my soul expanded and connected with his. Our bond has been there since the moment our gazes locked, but this, this was different.” I frowned, sighing.
“It’s confusing, really, and one of those things I think you have to experience for yourself. ”
Heraphia lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Won’t ever happen for me.”
If I could have returned to my dream and begged the Goddess to bless Heraphia and Zuriel with a mating bond, I wouldn’t have hesitated.
I’d have made a bargain if I had to, because I desperately wished my friend could feel that deep connection with her husband.
She’d be able to speak mind to mind with him, wherever he was off fighting, and know that he was okay.
Not wanting to watch that gray fog swallow her again, I continued on.
Perhaps sharing my problems would distract her from hers.
“When I allow our connection to bloom, I feel sheltered and wanted. Yet these voices in the back of my mind ruin it.” Because I sought shelter with a male who was supposed to be my enemy.
Who had killed my parents. Who had hunted me.
Heraphia listened to my stumbling explanation of it all, asking questions and intuiting what I held back. By the time I finished cleaning myself, a sly grin graced her face.
“You know what this means right?”
“No?” I questioned, wrapping a bath sheet around myself and stepping out of the tub. The glug of the draining water echoed off the stone walls.
“You should stop overthinking it. This could be such a good thing, for everyone, if you let it.” My best friend came up behind me, using her fingers to untangle the mess of my silver locks.
From that position, she whispered in my ear, low enough that even if someone were trying to listen to our conversation, catching her words would have been impossible.
“Vaeron is strong, physically and with his magic. You can use your bond to end the war.”
I picked up a comb and set to work on the ends of my frazzled hair. “How?” I mouthed the word into the mirror, brows furrowing.
“Kill the Koron and Korona.”
My fingers opened of their own accord. The metal teeth clanged against the marble counter, the sound cutting off like a symphony silenced mid-note.
It wasn’t a strategy—it was treason. We’d already committed it once by declaring ourselves Elessarum. The only reason we were still alive, still us instead of shells who could See, was because of our power.
My sharp intake of breath didn't stop Heraphia from continuing. “You and Vaeron rule instead. I’m sure the Elessarum would help. Lyriasthe is here, and she has much less restricted movement than us. She could get word to the leaders, tell them of a plan…”
What Heraphia proposed was a sacrilege. We could all be beheaded and our bodies left to rot in this world, our souls unable to move on, if we were even caught letting such thoughts breathe.
A chill dug into my bones. “Do not speak further,” I hissed under my breath. Heraphia stilled, brows dipping over her aquamarine irises. “I will not risk your life. Not when you’re all I have left.”
Clearing her throat, she took a step back and crossed her arms. “I will do whatever it takes to bring peace now. Won’t you?”
Heraphia didn’t know about my dream. Didn’t know the Goddess had told me there would be a price.
“Violence is not the answer,” I snapped, dropping my bath sheet and pulling on fresh clothes. “It goes against Elessarum values.”
But even as I spoke the words, I realized I no longer held the same conviction I once had.
I’d learned firsthand that words inflicted as much pain as swords.
And had I not been doing so all along, with my cruel remarks toward my mate?
Not to mention that I’d bitten him—and also used my magic to blast away my attacker.
I’d abandoned those nonviolent principles weeks ago to save myself, and I felt no remorse after. Nor could I muster any now.
Should I surrender them altogether?
The dangerous thought prowled through my mind like a predator testing its cage’s bars.
“What are two lives to spare tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions if the Koron and Korona get what they want?” she pressed, the words spilling out of her mouth too smoothed, too practiced, even as her hands trembled against her upper arms.
The desperation that had leaked through my friend since my arrival should have been a warning bell. Because I’d ignored it, I’d left her drowning in this dark abyss—a place she never should have gone.
And I had to pull her out of the water.
“Even if I wanted to be noble–” The realization that technically, through my bond with Vaeron, I was Herra R?viel, hit me then. I shuddered. There would be time to examine that thought later. “Even if I wanted that, those actions would mean I was no better than the people we hate.”
Heraphia shrugged. “I’m not sure I believe that anymore. Or that the Elessarum leaders would dismiss such an opportunity.”
“You’re holding something back,” I stated, throwing my hair into a messy bun on top of my head and securing it with a leather band. The heat was oppressive, and the adrenaline coursing through my veins didn’t help.
A devious smile tugged at her lips. We’d been sisters long enough that even without our highly attuned intuition, we knew each other’s tells. “They are increasing recruitment based on what we Saw. A forceful conscription to match the Demons’ swelling ranks.”
Bile rose in my throat. “How do you know?”
“Lyriasthe and a few others told me. That’s all the servants can talk about.
They’re the worst gossips in the palace.
You wouldn’t believe how much they overhear because the nobles treat them like they are invisible.
Before you arrived, they’d join us in the evenings after we’d been taken care of and whisper of scandals to make us feel better. ”
I gaped at her. “Why not since I’ve arrived?”
“Because the Issaraeth has been around more and they were afraid the Korona was spying on them. I didn’t correct them since no one else knew. But now that your mate is all anyone can talk about…”
“Ugh,” I grumbled, rubbing my temples. A headache bloomed. What was I supposed to do? Become someone I wasn’t?
The reflection of my movement caught my attention. I looked at myself in the mirror—really looked for the first time in a long time.
The female who’d hidden in the lake country and run at the slightest whisper of the royal hunters had vanished like morning mist. A maelstrom raged behind icy eyes—a look that promised doom and destruction to those who faced her wrath.
I was mated to the Issaraeth. I lived in Thalvireth Palace. I sat atop a crystal chair and pretended to See.
For so long, I’d been following the choreography of others, half a step behind, while a tempest brewed inside me.
It was time I changed the melody. Started leading the dance. Took the realm by storm.
Snatched power and drove it deep enough to crack the gilded exterior of this fucking palace.
I could figure out how to do so without further violence—without staining my own hands ruby.
That price I’d pay for peace? It would be nothing if I used my wits and my position and wielded them like the weapon the crown wanted me to be.
Resolve hardened, I met Heraphia’s gaze. “We’re going to end this.”
We weren’t younglings any longer, dreaming of a different world. No, we were plotting the fall of the crown.
Her brows lifted, hope flitting through her expression. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes.” I stepped closer, clasping her forearms. “But no killing. I’ll need your Sight. And not a word about this to anyone. I need to speak with Vaeron. He told me last night that after his conversation with his sister, everything became clear to him. I need to figure out exactly what that means.”
“I’ll do anything,” she swore, holding my gaze with steady, sinister conviction.
My stomach plummeted.
What has she already done?
I’d heard that tone before, from many who had already accepted death as the outcome.
She would not die. Neither would I. And Vaeron would live through his trial by light. There was no way the Goddess would let him die, not after she’d appeared to me and told me we were change.
“Good. When we go back to the chairs today, focus your attention on the Koron and Korona. I need to know what they’re thinking, what they’re planning on doing,” I told her. Yet mixing with determination was a significant measure of dread. “Did you hear what Vaeron has to do?”
Heraphia nodded. “I did. Herr Elyriane is a fool for thinking he can take on the Issaraeth.”
“He has to throw it,” I murmured, throat thickening as air refused to glide in and out of my lungs. “Otherwise, he forfeits me.”
My friend’s eyes went wide. “No…”
Hot salt pricked the back of my nose, and I sniffed, hard, to dispel it. “So we must gather as much information as quickly as we can.”
“It is done.” Heraphia pulled me in for a quick embrace, her familiar citrus scent curling around me like home. “Thank you, Sylaira.”
“We’ve been through everything together,” I told her as we broke apart, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “Why not this too?”
My best friend grinned. I mirrored her expression. But my smile was hollow.
Yet as we entered the Divine Atrium, perched on our crystal stages and performed our duties to the realm, the walls closed in around from all sides, squeezing and merciless. Silver bars caged me in, forged from expectation and existential threats.
The price of peace would be steep.
And I couldn’t decide if it would cost me my soul, my friend’s, or the lives of everyone I loved.